Pleasures of the telescope: An Illustrated Guide for Amateur Astronomers and a Popular Description of the Chief Wonders of the Heavens for General Readers — John Shaqi
Pleasures of the telescope: An Illustrated Guide for Amateur Astronomers and a Popular Description of the Chief Wonders of the Heavens for General ReadersServiss, Garrett Putman
Science
Pleasures of the telescope: An Illustrated Guide for Amateur Astronomers and a Popular Description of the Chief Wonders of the Heavens for General Readers
The upper star in the Belt, delta, is double; distance, 53", p. 360 deg.;
magnitudes, second and seventh very nearly; colors, white and green or
blue. This, of course, is an easy object for the three-inch with a low
magnifying power. It would be useless to look for the two fainter
companions of delta, discovered by Burnham, even with our five-inch
glass. But we shall probably need the five-inch for our next attempt,
and it will be well to put on a high power, say three hundred diameters.
The star to be examined is the little brilliant dangling below the
right-hand end of the Belt, toward Rigel. It appears on the map as eta.
Spare no pains in getting an accurate focus, for here is something worth
looking at, and unless you have a trained eye you will not easily see
it. The star is double, magnitudes third and sixth, and the distance
from center to center barely exceeds 1", p. 87 deg.. A little tremulousness
of the atmosphere for a moment conceals the smaller star, although its
presence is manifest from the peculiar jutting of light on one side of
the image of the primary. But in an instant the disturbing undulations
pass, the air steadies, the image shrinks and sharpens, and two points
of piercing brightness, almost touching one another, dart into sight,
the more brilliant one being surrounded by an evanescent circle, a tiny
ripple of light, which, as it runs round the star and then recedes,
alternately embraces and releases the smaller companion. The wash of the
light-waves in the atmosphere provokes many expressions of impatience
from the astronomer, but it is often a beautiful phenomenon
nevertheless.
Between eta and delta is a fifth-magnitude double star, Sigma 725, which
is worth a moment's attention. The primary, of a reddish color, has a
very faint star, eleventh magnitude, at a distance of 12.7", p. 88 deg..
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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